Category: Africa

Two bigwigs arrested in Somali human trafficking ring in Nairobi; helped illegal migrants get to Malta (and US)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story not only involves bigwigs, but is so big it should be reported on the front page of the New York Times. Maybe a follow-up is due to their previous superficial reporting on Malta.

For years I’ve been writing about how the tiny island nation of Malta has been besieged by illegal Africans trying to get to Europe and beyond.  The ‘beyond’ includes the United States!  Aided by the Catholic Church, the US State Department (started in the Bush Administration) has made it a priority to transform illegal migrants on Malta into legitimate “refugees” destined for your towns.   I have literally over a hundred posts here on the disgusting and frankly illegal business.  (Type ‘Malta’ into our search function for 5 years of history).

Here is the story that I first saw at Horseed Media, but is from Malta Today (yesterday) with this headline:

Italian diplomat, WFP collaborator among 55 arrested for trafficking Somalis to Malta

Italian police arrest 55, including Italian diplomat at Nairobi embassy in connection with a criminal organisation which has diverted Somali migrants to Malta.

Italian police have said that they have dealt a strong blow to two criminal organisations which profiteered from trafficking Somali nationals from Libya to Malta over the past months.

Nabbed were a cultural attache at the Italian embassy and a worker for the World Food Programme (UN of course)!

The investigations – reportedly held in conjunction with Maltese authorities – led to the arrest at dawn of 55 people, including Hussein Mohamed Abdurahman, nicknamed ‘Banjè’, the cultural attaché at the Italian embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and Mohamed Sheik Ali Bashir a World Food Programme Collaborator.

The organisations, said to have branches in Kenya and Italy, took care of coordinating the Somali nationals movements from the horn of Africa towards Libya, and later organised their clandestine trips to Malta and also to Greece.

The organisations also saw to providing hundreds of Somalis with false documents to later abscond from Malta and make their way to Italy, and further North in Europe. [and to the US–ed]

In raids which involved 200 officers, arrests were made in Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence, Prato, Bergamo, Cuneo and Naples.

Other raids are said to be ongoing this morning in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Another 23 people have meanwhile been notified to have been placed under investigation by the Italian authorities for their secondary role in assisting the Somali migrants, by providing them logistical support.

Further investigations are ongoing in Ragusa, Sicily – another known landing point for migrants fleeing Libya after Malta.

According to a spokesman, the investigations were coordinated by Eurojust, and Europol.

Hundreds and hundreds of these Somali illegal aliens (mostly young men!) trafficked to Malta through Obama’s Libya are now in your towns in America!

Terror funding trial beginning for San Diego Somalis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No sooner do I tell you about the touchy-feely politically correct novel about Somalis in Maine, then I see the news that yet another terrorist funding trial is opening in San Diego.  Four men, including a mosque leader, are charged with sending money to the Al-Qaeda franchise in the Horn of Africa—-al Shabaab.

Just last month, here, we learned that a San Diego Somali woman got 8 years in the slammer for the same thing.  Taxpayers get to pay for their resettlement and then their prison terms.

Coincidentally, I  learned tonight that lucky San Diego was the first US resettlement city for Somalis in the early 1990’s.  (I’ll tell you about that tomorrow).

Somalis are busy standing trial—we reported on the Somali Christmas tree bomber case here a few days ago!

This is the latest news, emphasis mine, from UT San Diego.  (hat tip: Shariah Finance Watch)

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego trial of four Somali men charged with sending money and support to the terrorist group al-Shabaab is scheduled to begin in federal court this month.

A federal grand jury indicted the men in 2010 on charges of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and money laundering.

They have all pleaded not guilty. The men are accused of funneling about $8,000 raised in San Diego’s Somali immigrant community to al-Shabaab fighters in 2008.

At a hearing last week before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller on pretrial motions, the four defendants sat quietly in the jury box. A group of supporters filled the seats in the courtroom’s gallery — men sitting on one side and women on the other.

The defendants are Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cabdriver; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam of a City Heights mosque; Issa Doreh, former president of a nonprofit group aiding the Somali community; and Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud of Anaheim.

Who are these lawyers?  Inquiring minds would like to know!

Interest in the case is high within the immigrant community in San Diego and nationally. The men are being represented by lawyers from around the country who were recruited by a legal foundation that since 2001 has raised money to represent Muslims accused of crimes in federal and state courts.

There is more, read it all.  And, this is funny, lawyers for the defendants want to keep mention of al-Qaeda out of the trial so as not to remind jurors that violence and death are associated with Jihadists.

For new readers we have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.

Ethiopian former Marine sentenced to 25 years in prison

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

His family alleges mental illness (how many times have we heard this lately with resettled refugees?).  As we pointed out here in June 2011 when Yonathan Melaku was first arrested for shooting at the Pentagon and planning to deface graves at Arlington National Cemetery, this man most likely got to Northern Virginia as part of the large Ethiopian resettlement project of the US State Department.

And, how many times do we hear that Islamic radicalization occurs due to poverty and lack of opportunity?  Time and again we see cases of  radicalization happening among those refugees who actually grew up in America just like Melaku!  Why?  Because it isn’t poverty that drives Jihadists—-it is Islam itself!  You gotta wonder how this guy even got through screeners* to be a Marine in the first place.

From the Washington Post:

A former Marine was sentenced to 25 years in prison Friday for firing shots at the Pentagon and other military facilities in 2010, but federal prosecutors said it was just the start of a violent campaign to register his anger at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  [What!  He didn’t know about those wars when he signed-up with the Marines in 2007!–ed]

Yonathan Melaku, 24, of Fairfax County told investigators that he wanted people to “be afraid for supporting the war,” so he fired at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle twice, the Pentagon, and then at Marine Corps and Coast Guard recruiting centers in Northern Virginia. No one was injured.

When he believed that the public wasn’t heeding his message, he planned to deface 2,379 graves at Arlington National Cemetery, shoot at more buildings and then blow up a military fuel tanker truck, according to court documents.

“A terrorist instills fear in the public, and that’s exactly what you did,” U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said before he sentenced Melaku in federal court in Alexandria. “You remind me of the snipers.”

Melaku was arrested in June 2011 at Arlington National Cemetery before he could carry out the rest of his campaign. He had a backpack full of spent shells, ammonium nitrate (a component of homemade explosives) and spray paint that he planned to use to scrawl Arabic phrases on the tombstones of those who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Last January, Melaku reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to three charges related to the shootings: injuring property of the United States, use of a firearm during a crime of violence and attempted injury to veterans’ memorials on U.S. property. The agreement called for a 25-year sentence.

In court Friday, Melaku did not speak about the crimes, but his attorneys and family members sketched a portrait of a young man who was delusional and suffering from schizophrenia.

Melaku’s attorneys said they had filed a motion asking for a judge to review the plea deal and had considered an insanity plea after a government doctor’s recent diagnosed mental illness. But on Friday, they withdrew the motion.

There is more, read it all.

Doesn’t look like any entrapment defense was possible here—he got caught in the act.  Where is the comment from CAIR this time?  Is this one of those “genuine plots?”

* I wonder if the Marines were so thrilled to recruit a Muslim that they ignored warning signs.

Trial begins in Portland for Somali “Christmas tree” bomber

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

More than two years after his arrest for attempting to bomb a square in Portland where thousands were gathering for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s trial opened last week.

Here is my report on the 2010 arrest.

The latest news on the former refugee’s trial that began Friday is here (Reuters at the Baltimore Sun of all places).   The defense will probably argue that the vulnerable “youth” was entrapped.

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan 11 (Reuters) – A jury was empanelled on
Friday to hear the trial of a Somali-born man charged with
trying to blow up a crowd of people at a Christmas tree-lighting
ceremony in Oregon two years ago with a fake bomb supplied by
undercover agents posing as militant Islamists.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was 19
when he was arrested, faces life in prison on a single charge of
attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a plot to blow
up the 2010 festivities at a public plaza in downtown Portland.

An FBI affidavit filed in the case said Mohamud was taken
into custody after he attempted to use a cell phone to trigger
what he believed was a car bomb but was actually a fake device
supplied by agents posing as operatives for Islamic extremists.

[…..]

Mohamud has pleaded not guilty and defense attorneys are
expected to mount an entrapment defense, arguing that the former
Oregon State University student would never had committed such
an act without the FBI’s grooming and urging.

You can bet CAIR is watching the case!   Crocodile tears for “genuine plots” that go undetected.

The Muslim community has been watching the case closely.

“We’re concerned about genuine plots to harm Americans and
we hope each and every one of them is foiled,” said Ibrahim
Hooper, national communications director for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.

“But we are also concerned that they are focusing so many
resources on people who would never have committed a crime, that
they are diverting resources to foil actual lone wolf plots,” he
added.

You might also want to see the New York Times story on the trial and the suggestion that the liberal climate in Portland would produce a jury that might very well fall for the entrapment argument.

For new readers we have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.

To add diversity, Minneapolis and Columbus, OH recruiting Somalis for police and fire department jobs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We know those Somalis in Columbus know a bit about fires because back in 2009 we had a report that one group of Somalis tried to burn down the mosque of another group of more moderate Somalis, read all about it here.

Here is yesterday’s story from the Columbus Dispatch:

About 35 young men showed up at a meeting in Minneapolis last week to find out how to join the city’s fire department.

They were all from the local Somali community, which is the nation’s largest.

Community leaders organized the meeting because Minnesota’s largest city is making an effort this year to recruit from the Somali and eastern African communities, said Casidy Anderson, the fire department’s community risk-reduction officer. “It’s important for the fire department that it reflects the face of the community,” Anderson said.

Columbus is making a similar effort and is hiring a consultant to work with both the fire and police divisions to increase diversity.

“There is a targeted approach to reach out not just to the Somali community but to all immigrant communities,” said Napoleon Bell, the executive director of the Columbus Community Relations Commission. Columbus is home to the country’s second-largest Somali population. Some are hesitant to apply to become a police officer or firefighter because they don’t trust authorities, based on bad experiences where they came from, Bell said.

The city is to begin a 35-member fire-recruit class in June.

Authorities might think it’s logical to aim for the younger Somalis who have grown up here, but remember it was virtually all young Somalis (who had grown up here!) that were recruited to join the Jihad in Africa a few years ago, remember!

Minneapolis is aiming for younger members of the Somali community who have grown up in America and are more comfortable with the idea of joining the fire department, Anderson said. “It’s almost like they’re straddling two cultures,” Anderson said.

Then I am guessing that maybe those fire departments have looked to European cities (Paris and Malmo, Sweden come to mind) where police and fire fighters do not enter the Muslim “no-go zones” even to fight fires.

The Minneapolis fire department wants to make sure it reflects the changing face of the city, Anderson said. “The Somali community is here. They are here to stay.”

It might be a good idea for Minneapolis and Columbus officials to keep the famous Ricci Supreme Court case in mind as they proceed.

For new readers:  Columbus Somalis made news just last month, here, when they had to be dispersed by the police while seeking subsidized housing applications.